NEPAL
Many detained after attack
Police rounded up 150 suspects yesterday as part of a hunt for two assailants who stabbed the country’s new energy minister just hours after he was appointed. Gokarna Bista sustained injuries to his neck and head when he was attacked near his house in Kathmandu on Monday evening by two men, at least one of whom was wielding a traditional Gurkha khukhri knife, police said. Bista required hospital treatment for his wounds, but his condition was described as stable. Kathmandu police chief Pushkar Karki said 150 people had been taken into custody in an initial police sweep after the attack.
CHINA
Grandson killed over zodiac
A woman in an eastern province killed her infant grandson by tossing him into a well after a fortune-teller told her the child’s zodiac sign would bring ruin to the family, state media reported. The woman, identified only by her surname, Ao, resolved to kill the child in Nanchang city after the seer warned his Lunar zodiac sign “clashed” with those of others in the family, Jiangxi Province’s news Web site said on Monday. When Ao’s daughter-in-law, surnamed Wang, was pregnant with the child, Ao went so far as to encourage another grandson to hit Wang in the belly in an attempt to cause a miscarriage, the government-run Jiangxi News site said.
AUSTRALIA
Kangaroo not mutilated
Police yesterday said tests had revealed that a kangaroo originally thought to have been castrated while alive had merely been the victim of a road accident. The animal was injured when struck by a vehicle late on Saturday or early on Sunday in Yarrambat, northeast of Melbourne. Police had originally feared that someone had then mutilated it by removing its genitalia, but tests released yesterday showed this was not the case. “After results from an autopsy conducted on the deceased kangaroo, vets have come to the conclusion that the animal was not mutilated,” Victorian police said in a statement. “Vets believe the animal may have been dragged after being hit by a car ... causing the loss of body parts.”
TAJIKISTAN
Text divorce to be banned
Religious authorities say divorce by text message will soon be banned, as they seek to stamp out the practice in the mainly Muslim Central Asian nation. State religious affairs committee head Abdurakhim Kholikov said in Dushanbe on Monday that sending SMSs with the “triple talaq,” a Muslim ritual whereby a husband can end a marriage by reciting the term for divorce three times, breaches Islamic law. Divorce by text message has become common in the country, particularly among migrant laborers living abroad. Households depend heavily on cash remittances and divorce usually dooms wives to deep penury.
SOUTH KOREA
Police sniff out US$10.1m
Police have sniffed out a total of 11 billion won (US$10.1 million) in cash buried in remote garlic fields and have confiscated the haul, officers said yesterday. TV footage showed plastic containers brimming with jaw-dropping wads of cash being excavated one after another in the southwestern city of Gimje. Two brothers who had made the money from an illegal Internet gambling operation asked their brother-in-law, surnamed Lee, to hide the cash as police began closing in on them, media reports said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in